> The Sappir-Whorf hypothesis refers to specific languages, and is all but proven wrong in its strong form (a person speaking English and a person speaking Japanese seem to perform exactly the same at all cognitive tasks).

I believe it's a bit more complicated than this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referent

> In fields such as semantics, semiotics, and the theory of reference, a distinction is made between a referent and a reference. Reference is a relationship in which a symbol or sign (a word, for example) signifies something; the referent is the thing signified. The referent may be an actual person or object, or may be something more abstract, such as a set of actions.

> Reference and referents were considered at length in the 1923 book The Meaning of Meaning by the Cambridge scholars C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards. Ogden has pointed out that reference is a psychological process, and that referents themselves may be psychological – existing in the imagination of the referrer, and not necessarily in the real world. For further ideas related to this observation, see failure to refer.

In this case, what has been ~"proven wrong" is Whorf's specific hypothesis (the reference) of the underlying phenomenon (the referent) that he was observing, whereas the general notion of whether language fundamentally/substantially affects cognition seems to remain unknown.

As a thought experiment: imagine a culture where this psychological phenomenon of "referent" is a "first class" concept in a language, and the culture that uses it insists that the distinction must be at least taken into consideration whenever a disagreement arises between two or more people....after several decades under such a model, might substantial differences arise? Perhaps this isn't a "proper" example of Whorfism, but it seems to be in the neighbourhood.

Well, I would say that in your thought experiment it's actually the culture that could produce a substantial difference in cognition, whereas the langauge is merely a consequence of that culture.

For example, there are some Australian langauges if I remember correctly where instead of words for left, right, ahead, behind (relative positioning) they use words for something similar to north/south/east/west (absolute positioning) - as in, "give me that cup to your northeast". This of course requires a habit of keeping track of your absolute positioning at all times.

However, you will not gain this ability or habit just by learning the langauge. In fact, your langauge can even express that same thing today. Instead, you will be unable to naturally use their langauge unless and until you get into the habit of keeping track of your absolute positioning.

Similarly, the people growing up in this culture may not easily learn what we mean by left and right, but they would not gain the ability to understand these concepts merely by learning English - instead, they would naturally speak English while avoiding left/right references, or simply make more mistakes than someone growing in a culture where relative positioning is the preferred form of communication.

> Well, I would say that in your thought experiment it's actually the culture that could produce a substantial difference in cognition, whereas the langauge is merely a consequence of that culture.

Regardless of whether the language is a consequence of the culture (say, they imported it, or had it imposed upon them), how might one determine with accuracy that consistently disciplined speaking (which is preceded by cognition) has no causal dependence on speaking this substantially more strict language itself?

> However, you will not gain this ability or habit just by learning the langauge.

You will not necessarily gain this ability just by learning it, agreed - but using it on a daily basis is another matter.

> In fact, your langauge can even express that same thing today.

It can express it, in some fashion (typically with clumsy, annoying phrases and qualifiers that make people angry, rather than dedicated, socially normal words), but whether one actually does it on a regular basis is another matter.

There are various differences between someone who studied 3 months of 1 hour per week of Jiu Jitsu (or math, physics, etc) classes, and someone who practiced it for several hours a day from an early age.

Even in simple scenarios it can be extremely difficult to accurately predict what the consequences of something are, and language, cognition, and culture are not exactly simple. And, from a scientific/epistemic perspective, one should always keep in mind that an absence of evidence is not proof of absence....which brings to mind another thought experiment that is different but similar: what might a society be like where epistemology and logic are considered crucially valuable skills, and were taught from Grade 1 through 12 to all children, and being incorrect or even speaking epistemically unsoundly were considered seriously shameful? Might it be possible that one would notice anything substantially different in people who were raised in such a culture (and, what might be some differences we might see)? I would be quite shocked if it had no effect.

> The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis refers to specific languages, and is all but proven wrong in its strong form (a person speaking English and a person speaking Japanese seem to perform exactly the same at all cognitive tasks).

Japanese people show extremely high performance at "spatial awareness" tasks compared to whites.[1] So on average this isn't true. But it's true that there does not appear to be any benefit from either language -- Japanese-speaking Japanese show no advantage over English-speaking Japanese.

[1] On white-normed IQ tests, East Asians generally show a bit of underperformance (relative to European whites) on verbal tasks and gigantic overperformance on spatial tasks, which is traditionally averaged out to an average IQ score moderately above that of whites. Interestingly, Native Americans show the same slant -- much much stronger spatial than verbal performance -- but at a lower base level.

And that is due to the language and not, say, the writing tradition ?

If we kept the same languages and made japanese people write it massively in 26 half sound symbols and made all of what you call a white european population use 3k+ ideogram drawings for word starting at 3 years old, do you think we d see exactly the same performance ?

I bet you the writing tradition is very influencial when it varies so much and has no relationship with language, especially in Japanese where they frankensteined Chinese symbols over centuries which must require an enormous mental gymnastics and redirect large processing power vs someone who can read and write everything he hears relatively simply?

> And that is due to the language and not, say, the writing tradition ?

No, neither.

> If we kept the same languages and made japanese people write it massively in 26 half sound symbols and made all of what you call a white european population use 3k+ ideogram drawings for word starting at 3 years old, do you think we d see exactly the same performance ?

Yes, the influence of spoken and written language appears to be zero. I mentioned this.